When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?
- Michel de Montaigne
There were many things I could have said at that point, but I realized that engaging him on any level would have been simply playing into his hand. This was one of those games where the only way to win was to not play.
He kept his pose for a full minute, eyes boring into mine. He expected me to say something, to defend myself, to accuse him, to accuse the murderer he had Found and then lost. He expected me to break off from his stare in guilt and shame. I did none of these. I just sat there, in the trance, staring back at him, Finding him.
Around him flowed dark thin bands of cause and effect, tying him to Mr. Jones, and more thinly to the rest of us. There was single thin tie that flowed out the door, but I wasn't sure what it led to.
It was, in fact, Mr. Jones who broke the silence.
"Well, Gregson?" she said, still standing behind me. "You have your little reunion, as requested. Now hand over Leena."
Gregson stared at me for a moment more, then looked at Mr. Jones over my shoulder. "I can't do that." He said simply. Getting information out of him was always a laborious effort. He was fond of single line statements.
"Do you care to explain what you mean by 'can't'?" she said, her voice dangerous. She stepped into the circle facing him, still carrying the bloodied knife. "Do you have her or not?"
"I do not," he said, his patience growing thin.
"And the DNA evidence you sent me as proof?"
"Collected from your labs during my brief visit there... Ma'am. Are you not paying attention? I needed a way to enlist your aid. I am not working for you, child. You are working for me."
Mr. Jones fumed at the 'child' comment and took another step towards him, knife raised. "So that is what you were doing there," she said without any great interest. "I am also well aware that Finders can lie, so your betrayal is also a surprise."
I heard a short gasp from behind me. Matsen. It is sad when our illusions are shattered, though I hoped that Matsen wouldn't be around long enough to let his disappointment really get to him.
"And any case, I have brought her to you." Gregson said. I wasn't sure how much time Gregson had spent with Mr. Jones. He might not know that she didn't like games of any kind.
She took another threatening step towards him, flipping the knife to her left hand. "I think I will start on the right hand this time," she mused to herself. "Pain added to the loss of utility might be more motivating."
Gregson took a step back, crouching into a defensive posture. "Don't even think about it," Matsen said. I assumed that he still had his gun with him and was as ready to blow a hole in Gregson as he had in me.
Mr. Jones feinted right then slashed upward with her knife, but suddenly Gregson was no longer there. She had forgotten a very important fact. Gregson was not only a Finder, but the Finder who had trained us all. And apparently he still had skills.
In my trance state, I could see that he had started moving out of the path of the knife before she had fully formed the thought. By the time she had completed her move, he was standing well behind. I heard Matsen trying to shift his aim to keep up.
"I don't know where she is," he said, his voice menacingly quiet, "but they do. That is why I have brought them here."
Mr. Jones spun to face him, her temper rising. "If they knew where she was, they would have produced her!" Here is where Mr. Jones had made her biggest mistake. She started an argument with Gregson. It was a game he was very good at.
"Not so, child. There are many reasons why they may have kept her from you. Friedman might realize her importance and be trying to collect all the glory for himself." Mr. Jones spun and aimed her knife at me.
"Is this true?"
What glory was he talking about? Once again, I was sure that he knew more than he was saying.
He wasn't finished yet. "Bobak might be hiding her in his capacity as Station security, waiting for the proper authority to come and collect her."
Mr. Jones lowered her knife and turned to Fred.
He indicated Markham and Joy. "These two might be protecting her from a world of violent men in a misguided belief in her innocence."
He turned back to Mr. Jones. "You can't see it, can you? The streams of cause and effect, the push and pull of the secrets we keep. The worlds of possibilities and potentials, the greater world beyond your petty immediate needs. She is connected to them, in some way I haven't yet figured out. So you see, I have brought her to you, as I promised, just one step away."
"So which one is it?"
"Ask them." He said simply, turning his back to her.
"I haven't got time for this! I am asking YOU! Where is she?" she yelled the last as she leapt at him. But again, he was gone. This time however, he had ducked under her swing and grabbed the knife from her. By the time she was aware that he had moved, he was standing behind her with the point of her own knife touching her spine directly between her shoulder blades.
"Your timeline is of no interest to me. Ask them," he suggested again. "Who has the most to gain by hiding her? Which is the most competent? Who followed this trail first?"
He was looking directly at me. He was trying to set me up! But he was sadly misinformed. I wasn't the first to come to the station looking for Leena.
Mr. Jones glanced over her shoulder at where I assumed Matsen was standing. "Watch him," was all she said.
She took a step forward away from Gregson. She held out her hand to him, and he handed her knife back to her.
Mr. Jones then turned to Markham and Joy and stepped towards them. Gregson looked disinterested, shrugged and took a stepped back to watch the proceedings.
I could see Mr. Jones' mind working over the possibilities as she stood there facing them. I still sensed the maelstrom of their crushed dreams swirling between Markham and Joy. I don't believe that Mr. Jones, for all her threats and torture, could cause this grieving couple more pain than they were already experiencing on a day to day basis. I was wrong.
"You came to this station as soon as I mentioned this job. You must have known something before I came to you! Where is Leena?"
Neither of them looked at her, nor did they respond. They were both in their trances, seeing cause and effect, though I wasn't sure if they were able to fully account for the lengths that Mr. Jones would go to.
Mr. Jones looked at the two of them and came to a decision with a nod. She stepped over to Joy and crouched down to bring their heads into level.
"Well, my pretty little one. Where is Leena?"
Joy tuned to Mr. Jones, their faces less than a foot apart. "I don't know."
Mr. Jones smiled. In that smile was blood and death. I hoped that Joy could see it.
"Be careful Joy," I said, "She's very –"
I felt the barrel of the gun push into the back of my skull and could smell Matsen's stench. "Please, finish your sentence," he said. "I am just looking for an excuse."
"So you're Joy," Mr. Jones said, "I could never get it straight. Well, Joy, let's try this again."
With this she casually reached over and with as swift stroke sliced open Joy's shirt and undergarment, exposing her chest and the thin red line that had been traced between her breasts by the razor point of the knife. That cut looked disturbingly familiar.
Switching her knife back to her right hand, she pulled the shirt wide open. Using her left hand, Mr. Jones ran her hand slowly down Joy's chest, her fingers lightly brushing just to the left of the cut she had made. When she reached Joy's left breast she pushed harder into the soft flesh. There was nothing sexual about it. It was all very clinical. Finally Mr. Jones smiled.
She drove her thumb viciously into a spot just above the curve of Joy's left breast and moved her hand away to inspect her work. A nasty red mark, left by Mr. Jones' thumbnail, was starting to rise.
In all this, Joy never changed expression. She simply kept staring at Mr. Jones. I started to say something, but the gun pressed even harder against my skull. To hell with it, you only live once.
"She said she doesn't know. You don't have to do this!"
Mr. Jones didn't even look up at me. "Do you know where Leena is Finder? Produce her for me right now and we can stop this." She paused a moment. "No? Then I do have to do this."
Mr. Jones switched the knife back to her left hand. She used the tip to trace a thin cross over the red mark she had left, blood now welling up and seeping down Joy's chest.
"NO!" Fred finally realized what Mr. Jones was threatening. The gun left my head, and was now presumably pointing at Fred now.
"SHUT UP!" Matsen yelled, his empty bluster a stark contrast to Mr. Jones' quiet menace. The gun off my skull, I tried to kick my chair back to perhaps dislodge Matsen, but he just pushed me back into place. "Nice try, dead man," he said.
Mr. Jones didn't bother to acknowledge this exchange. "If you don't tell me where Leena is, I am going to put this knife in your heart."
"My heart was lost years ago," Joy said simply.
"How very poetic." She placed the tip of the knife on the cross on Joy's breast and pushed lightly, the tip sliding in about half an inch.
"You understand that I do not make empty threats." Mr. Jones wasn't looking at Joy any more, but at Markham. "If she doesn't know, then you must. Tell me now, or she dies."
Markham's look was troubled, her trance state stuttering as her emotions kicked in. "I - I didn't choose this place. She did. I thought she could see something that I couldn't and that is why we came here. She never told me why." The maelstrom between Markham and Joy started to flicker. Markham suspected something, but I had no idea what.
Mr. Jones turned back to Joy, her fingertips dancing lightly over the hilt. "If not to follow Leena, why did you come here?"
"You wouldn't understand." Joy said flatly, still fully engaged in her own trance.
Mr. Jones pushed the knife in a little more, the blood now pouring in spurts around the blade. Markham gasped, whispering "Please don't. Take me. I will do anything." Tears were pouring down her face. She was struggling against her bonds, trying to push herself with her legs. Between them, the maelstrom had disappeared.
"Don't do this," I begged. "Leena can't be worth all of this!"
"Please," Fred said. "I will let you off the station, I will let you go anywhere."
Gregson was silent.
But Mr. Jones was deaf to all of us. She was hunting, only focused on Joy.
"Why here?" was all she said.
Expression finally came into Joy's face. But it wasn't a look of pain, but a gentle smile. She turned to look at Markham.
"Because this is where we met. I was hoping that maybe we could start again. I guess not."
With this, Mr. Jones slid the knife through Joy's ribs and into her heart. Joy, her face turning grey, slumped into her chair quietly, the air seeping out of her lungs, the blood now merely trickling out the wound in her chest.
With a shock, I realized that I had witnessed this specific method of torture and murder only a few days earlier. The tragedy was that I had solved the first murder by helplessly witnessing a second.
"Bloody waste of time," was all that Mr. Jones said, pulling the knife out and wiping it on Joy's tattered shirt.
Joy was still smiling.